Josh Marshall

Articles by
Josh

It doesn't seem like a perfect comparison. But as this article shows, Sen. Frist seemed to have a more 'pragmatic' definition of what constitutes life before the subject become ripe for presidential grandstanding.

An important development from Vermont, reported here in the Rutland Herald: "The Vermont State Teachers' Retirement System on Tuesday became the first public pension board in the country to take formal action against President Bush's Social Security reforms. The trustees of the largest of Vermont's three public pension boards voted 4-2 to make it harder for investment firms that support those reforms to manage the $1.2 billion in assets in the teachers fund. The two dissenting votes were cast by trustees appointed by Gov. James Douglas."

Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX), March 18th 2005: "It is more than just Terri Schiavo. This is a critical issue for people in this position, and it is also a critical issue to fight that fight for life, whether it be euthanasia or abortion. I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, one thing God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo to elevate the visibility of what's going on in America. That Americans would be so barbaric as to pull a feeding tube out of a person that is lucid and starve them to death for two weeks. I mean, in America that's going to happen if we don't win this fight.

"And so it's bigger than any one of us, and we have to do everything that is in our power to save Terri Schiavo and anybody else that may be in this kind of position, and let me just finish with this:

"This is exactly the kind of issue that's going on in America, that attacks against the conservative moment, against me and against many others. The point is, the other side has figured out how to win and to defeat the conservative movement, and that is to go after people personally, charge them with frivolous charges, link up with all these do-gooder organizations funded by George Soros, and then get the national media on their side. That whole syndicate that they have going on right now is for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to destroy the conservative movement. It is to destroy conservative leaders, and not just in elected office, but leading. I mean, Ed Feulner, of the Heritage Foundation today was under attack in the National Journal. This is a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in. And you need to look at this, and what's going on and participate in fighting back."

I must say, I hope the supporters of Social Security aren't resting on their collective laurels just because the president's jihad against the program got off to such an abysmal start.

Today, in newspapers and on websites across the country, headlines used words like 'broke', 'bankrupt' and 'bust' to describe what happens to Social Security when it starts running a deficit at some time in the middle of this century. Only weeks ago, President Bush was being forced to back off such misleading and deceptive language. And many Republicans were openly criticizing him for it. Now these are the words of choice in supposedly straight news reportage.

Supporters of Social Security really don't have the luxury of letting one lie or distortion go unchallenged or unanswered.

There's an interesting article today in the Post which fronts the president's new threat that Democrats "will suffer political consequences if they continue to oppose his proposal without providing one of their own."

You'll notice that the article is datelined Albuquerque, where the president just held his most recent Bamboozlepalooza event.

What caught my attention is that while the Post piece made such prominent mention of the president's 'threat', it neglected to mention the name Heather Wilson, who has been obstinately refusing to take any position on Social Security for months.

Wilson, the representative from Albuequerque and the clear target of the president's visit, was afraid to be seen at the president's event today.

Through a spokesman, she begged off with a claim that she was "on a long-planned trip with her husband and two children." But in the context of her earlier flimflammery on this issue, that's simply not credible.

Bottom-line: While President Bush is seeding the media with bogus threats, his own Republicans are afraid to appear in public with him on his Social Security tours. Most press reports either don't mention that or, like CNN, they accept Wilson's bogus denials at face value.